Editorial
Latest spin to Delhi's propaganda offensive
BJP-led govt whips up alien bogey against Dhaka
At first it was al-Qaeda and ISI association related imputations against Bangladesh by India apparently designed for global consumption. These did not cut ice externally, but one would have thought that the card was played to an impeccable success in the Gujarat elections, though. Modi, 'the great divider', the sobriquet given to him by the highly reputed India Today magazine, has emerged as a phenomenon in Indian politics. There is a lot on the electoral plate of India anyway to be chary about.
The absurdity of New Delhi's claim that 20 million Bangladeshi immigrants are staying illegally in India is self-evident. It is curiously self-deprecatory for India also in that so many 'aliens' could, for the argument's sake, overstay in India throwing dusts in the eyes of her administrators. What is regrettable, as far as we are concerned, it is an affront to Bangladesh, which is made so much the worse for the fact that the number of illegal Pakistani immigrants was also cited alongside. As if bracketing the two countries in everything has become a fixation with the present BJP-led coalition government in India. That unquestionably is a clear sign of the top BJP leadership kowtowing to the extremist right in the unwieldy bandwagon.
Some Indian state elections are on the cards, the NDA coalition needs the chemistry to work unfazed for sometime yet and the national elections are not too far away either. The Gujarat formula which is so close to the heart of the BJP hardcore leadership is upping its ante, so it seems.
Detractors of the BJP-led government stretches the point to say that even the SAARC summit fell victim to it.
It is dumbfounding that such highly placed people in India like no less a person than L K Advani for one are being so notional about something so sensitive that they are putting the figure at nearly two crore infiltrators, something like one seventh of Bangladeshi's population making it to India and illegally staying there. And what are they going to do with this notional figure of so-called illegal immigrants: they are said to be intent upon hounding them out and deporting them to Bangladesh. It is the same dreadful spectre of push-in exercise about to rise that Indian central government undertook some years ago over the head of the West Bengal government which spoke with a different voice. Even from a train compartment allegedly Bangladeshi immigrants transported from a western India state were rescued by their compatriots in West Bengal.
What is the cut-off point that the BJP government in India is trying to invent here? The last time that 10 million Bangladeshis had crossed over to India against the backdrop of a genocide committed by the Pakistani occupation forces on the then East Pakistan returned to free Bangladesh in due course. It is a recorded fact of history. Is the BJP up to unsettling it?
We would very much like to believe that it is not an Indian reaction to Bangladesh's giving an East-ward thrust to her foreign policy directions. India remains a major foreign relations player in Asia, so that in all generosity she should be only appreciative of Bangladesh's move to become a bridge-head to South East Asia. Besides, India herself has a status in the ASEAN.
Need we remind BJP-led India that it's against international norms and practices to even entertain the notion of expelling citizens of one country to another, let alone doing it in real-life situation? In present-day parlance, expulsion of people has all the pejorative connotations that no civilised nation can countenance. If New Delhi at all has any point to make on the issue, let her give the details of the so-called illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in India to our government so that their particulars can be verified at our end.
India under the BJP-led government needs to weigh her options very carefully. Should she burn the boats to normal relations with Bangladesh? What about the Track-II diplomacy between the civil societies of the two countries that has a vast reservoir of a catalytic role to play in removing irritants in the Indo-Bangla ties?
Nobody meaning friendship between the two countries would like to see any fresh complication arise in their relationship.
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